On Wednesday afternoon, January 9, 2013, in the Word/Play workshop that meets at my studio, nine young writers spent ten minutes creating a collective list of things they were NOT going to think about for the next couple of hours. Here it is:
potato bugs
ear lobes
my mom's hair
peanuts
windows
mealy month-old apple slices
basketball
bad things
figures appearing out of mist/fog/shadows
homework
puffball mushrooms
fuchsia ducks with little bells on their tails
anchovies
cotton candy
raw tomatoes going swish
socks
dictionaries
tap dancing
Vikings
the sound a zipper makes
Peter Pan
locked boxes
horses
rain
tea
Doctor Who
worms
sorcery
things that fold in order to become easier to carry
gingerbread houses
how much I want to be watching Star Trek
the fact that it is not Friday
how much I have to read
how late it's already getting
chocolate cheesecake
cocoa-dusted truffles
chocolate eclairs
chocolate mousse
Kit Kats
Nutella
Turkish delight (with chocolate)
Snickers
Twix
chocolate cookies
all the ways to keep my hair from collapsing tomorrow
all the ways I could make money disappear
things that were true long ago
belt buckles
whatever else was in the pool water
being nearly an adult
the color red
pawnbrokers
cars approaching each other at varying speeds
how to make perfume
the sound of someone filing their nails
running a marathon
the importance of handwriting
the benefits of different sizes of whisks
subterranean oil reserves
writing another villanina (sestina combined with a villanelle)
what I have to do tomorrow
you
pink elephants with green umbrellas
the phone ringing — is it you?
appendicitis
The Picture of Dorian Gray and/or Oscar Wilde
saying goodbye to the Christmas tree
THANK YOU:
Ana Luisa Brady-McCullough
Seraphina Buckholtz
Karina Burbank
Amanda Coate
Rachel Frank
Sophia Hiller
WeiWei Luo
Rose Pinnisi
Phoebe Shalloway
